


art for art's sake

by unhookingthestars



Series: The Sum of Our Parts [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Platonic Relationships, Seriously though best friends forever and ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhookingthestars/pseuds/unhookingthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they're joined like hinges.<br/>(grantaire & cosette, best friends forever n ever amen)</p>
            </blockquote>





	art for art's sake

He loves her because they tell one another absolutely everything. (They need no time to know one another because they instinctively already do, a thousand times over.)

Because when he fails his major art exam for the semester, she’s there. Graffiti - sorry, defacement of public property - apparently isn’t assessable, although his portrayal of the Greek gods naked, feasting, laughing on the side of the politics building makes his professor laugh till he cries. Grantaire doesn’t find it quite so funny. Sure, the idea had been last minute, but he had been up all goddamn night and spent far more than was reasonable on spray paint. (And maybe Apollo’s face had been perfect – smiling and joyful instead of screwed up and full of disdain and irritation).

He hadn’t even taken a picture.

He returns to the little apartment he and Jehan share much later than should be acceptable for a weeknight. And she’s there: lazing on the couch with his little poet of a roommate, both wearing facemasks, disc two, season two of Seinfeld blaring in the dark room. He’s already drunk but she’s brought a bottle of gin, and Chinese food, and he collapses against her on the couch and doesn’t mind when the muddy crap all over her face smears against his.

When Cosette is done washing her face, and Jehan has slipped off to bed with pretty goodnight kisses pressed to their temples, Cosette steers him in front of her laptop and opens her Facebook. (And he wants to cry)

Because Cosette, in her sly sweetness, spent her entire afternoon sitting in front of his mural while the campus cleanup tried (being the operative word) to get to it. There are photos of the wall itself, lit up in the late afternoon sun, and then one of her and Eponine standing, arms out against it, screaming at the janitors. Marius and Courfeyrac join in a few shots later, holding makeshift posters reading “BANKSY? ARE YOU OUT THERE?” and “SUPPORT THE ARTS”. (Jehan had been taking the photos and giggling almost the entire time, so some of them are a little shoddy, but still-) There’s a photo of Combeferre calmly discussing something with the frazzled janitors, sweat glittering on his brow, sweater sleeves pushed up as they tend to be when he’s particularly passionate. There’s even one of Enjolras, hand partially over his face, clearly exasperated at the fools he calls friends.

The last photo is of all of them (save Jehan, and Bahorel, who had been coaxing shots into Grantaire at the time) standing in front of a white wall where once there was art. Cosette’s hair is all messed up. They’re all smiling.

Jehan finds them in the morning, all tangled up on the couch, and snaps a photo to send to the rest of the group. Everyone shows up for a huge Saturday brunch, Bahorel in the kitchen wearing one of Jehan’s aprons and screaming at Bousset to stay the fuck away from the stovetop. While Musichetta is telling the story of the time she sat silent in front of a piano for ten minutes as part of her music masters, Grantaire and Cosette slip onto the balcony.

“Thank you. You’re an angel, you know that?”

She smiles wickedly, presses her lips around the cigarette he offers her.

“I assure you my dear, I am no less human than you.”

(If you walk past the politics building you'll see the ugly too-bright white concrete walls and if you look harder, you'll almost see a big red "R" in the bottom corner.)

**Author's Note:**

> unhookingthestars.tumblr.com :3 x


End file.
